They have been engaged in passionate
attempts at the readjustment of the superficies of things. What we
require more than men of action at present are scholars, economists,
scientists, thinkers, educationalists, and litterateurs, who will
populate the desert depths of national consciousness with real thought
and turn the void into a fullness. We have few reserves of intellectual
life to draw upon when we come to the mighty labor of nation-building.
It will be indignantly denied, but I think it is true to say that the
vast majority of people in Ireland do not know the difference between
good and bad thinking, between the essential depths and the shallows in
humanity. How could people, who never read anything but the newspapers,
have any genuine knowledge of any subject on earth or much imagination
of anything beautiful in the heavens?
What too many people in Ireland mistake for thoughts are feelings. It is
enough to them to vent like or dislike, inherited prejudices or
passions, and they think when they have expressed feeling they have
given utterance to thought.
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